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October 23, 2008
It's hard to make sense of the Coalition's attack on Ken Henry, The Treasury Secretary, in the Senate estimates yesterday. From the bits of the video that I've seen, the questioning came across as bitter and spiteful in the context of monetary policy necessarily being made on the run to deal with a financial crisis.
What is to be gained from Senator Abetz accusing Henry of lying, when Henry said that the Reserve Bank and Treasury worked as team in developing the advice to the Rudd Government to guarantee bank deposits? Why this approach?
The Coalition has avoided being being sidelined in the financial crisis debate, and it has been successful in establishing a voice on economic issues by highlighting how the Rudd Government overplayed inflation and underplayed the impact of the global recession on Australia. There is an important role for the Coalition to hold the Rudd Government to account by asking probing questions.
Legitimate questions do need to be asked: should the Reserve Bank Governor have been at the weekend crisis meeting when the issue was a monetary policy one?; how should we deal with the consequences of government guaranteed investments creating serious dislocation in the financial system?; should there be a cap or threshold on the guarantee?
The Coalition have been asking good informed question under Turnbull. They look professional in doing so. They were effective. Their questions revealed Wayne Swan to be narrowly political and partisan in his answers (eg., it is economically irresponsible to ask probing questions!), in spite of the Government's rhetoric of bipartisanship.
Accountability is what should have happened when Treasury secretary underwent an eight-hour grilling yesterday at Senate estimates over the bank deposit scheme, the economic stimulus package and his discussions with Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens.
Why call for Henry to be sacked as Turnbull did? Why call him a liar as Abetz did? Why say, as Liberal senator Mitch Fifield did, that "The witness is defying the committee"? What is the point of this political tactic? What were they trying to achieve by that?
You can see the resentment of the Coalition Senators---they are out of power and they do not like it. Their old habits of bullying to impose their will on the mandarins and to break them no longer works now they are in opposition. They looked a rabble wanting blood.
So why did they drop the professional mask that exposed the underlying nastiness by attacking the Treasury mandarin, rather than addressing the issues to understand the options that could be used to respond to the effects of the financial crisis on Australia? Losing it the way they did s not holding the Rudd Government to account through the powers of the Senate's committee system. Maybe they would have learned something beyond their talking points in the conservative echo chamber.
Update
That event in the Senate estimates was an abuse of accountability done to try and score cheap political points. The political strategy was one of breaking Ken Henry so that the Coalition could find the info they needed to attack Rudd and Swan. What the Coalition Senators saw was lies, subterfuge and cover up---the game they had practised for a decade---when Henry was telling the truth. The Coalition Senators came away with nothing.
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Shorn of power some Coalition MP's look what they actually are--schoolyard bullies.